BANKS TURN TO
MIND READING TO SOURCE TOP TECH GRADUATES
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ant to work at a
bank? First you have to let them read your mind.
At career fairs and
on university campuses as part of its graduate hiring scheme, Royal
Bank of Scotland Group Plc has been attaching
sensors to the heads of potential candidates, to measure brain activity and
attention spans.
Students are played a
series of images and videos for a few minutes while being
monitored. Depending on how they react, they’re presented with a
description of their personality type, followed by an area of the bank’s
business they might be suited to.
“We are using
gamification and online simulation" to create experiences for graduates to
be assessed from, RBS Chief Information Officer Patrick Eltridge
said in an interview, “but also give them valuable feedback.”
Tech Battle
Banks face an
unprecedented demand to hire talented technology employees, due to the
increasing need-for-speed from institutional trading to mobile banking, the
changing demographic of their customers, and the growing cyber-threat from
state-funded hackers to rogue teenagers.
But to convince
graduates that working for a bank might be better than joining a startup,
lenders are keen to show new hires they are technology companies first, and
banks second.
Deutsche Bank AG
has doubled the size of its technology graduate pool over the past two years.
“The majority of the technology graduates we want to bring in are people with a
focus on software engineering,” said Scott Marcar, Deutsche Bank’s IT boss in
London.
JPMorgan Chase &
Co. last year began ramping up the number of technology staff it was hiring.
The U.S. lender already spends $9 billion a year on technology, a budget
covering developer salaries to cybersecurity, with roughly a third targeted at
new investments. Bank of America Corp. has an annual budget of $3 billion for
new technology projects.
Despite the financial
firepower from the banking sector, there is stiff competition for those with a technology background. Facebook Inc., Google and Snap Inc. recently announced plans to increase hiring in
London, and food-delivery
company Deliveroo is considering doubling its 150-strong workforce in its
London-headquarters, looking for data scientists and machine learning experts,
according to a person close to the situation.
“There’s definitely a
challenge in the sector that’s born out of historical reputation and some of
the legacy impact from the global financial crisis,” said Paul Aldrich, head of
financial services technology at search firm Odgers Berndtson.
It’s not just new
tech firms that are looking to poach talent. New banking startups are also
competing for young programmers.
“We tend to find it
easier to attract and retain people than the bigger banks,” said Tom Blomfield,
a 31-year technologist who secured a license from the Bank of England for Monzo
Bank Ltd. earlier this year.
“People want to work on really hard problems from scratch with other talented
people, rather than be small fish in a big pond, maintaining software that’s
been there for 30 years.”
Monzo also publishes
its technical plans on the internet, which leads to developers seeking to join
the firm.
A SOLID GOLD,
DIAMOND-ENCRUSTED DONALD TRUMP IPHONE NOW AVAILABLE IN THE MARKET
Goldgenie, a luxury
goods company famous for gold-plating just about anything for its wealthy
clients, has recently launched a unique Donald Trump-themed iPhone 7 made out
of solid 24K gold and encrusted with diamonds. And the best part is that this
gem costs only $151,000.
The Goldgenie retail
store in Sharjah, a city near Dubai, came up with the idea for this unusual
product after it was specifically requested by a Chinese woman, last
month. Frank Fernando, managing director of Goldgenie, declined to
identify the customer by name, but said that he believes her family wants to
give it to Trump himself after his inauguration, as a present. Anyway,
Goldgenie loved the idea so much that they made it available to their other
clients as well.
I guess I can see
some of the world’s super-rich spending a whopping $151,000 on a gold iPhone
7 embellished with over 450 VS1 white diamonds within the Apple logo
and around its edges, but who would want Trump’s grinning face stamped on it?
Well, it turns out that the idea was very inspired, as Goldgenie claims that it
has had nine more orders for its unique Trump iPhone.
Not
only that, but Emirates 24/7 reports that the Goldgenie sales team is
actually receiving several inquiries per day from people asking to have Trump’s
face engraved on their own devices. The guy is apparently really popular among
the uber-rich.
The company’s team of
artisans spend 180 man hours working on the custom iPhone 7, but that’s not the
only justification for the scary price tag. The device also comes
with military grade encryption as well as call privacy features, among
other perks. Still, $151,000 sounds insane.
And if you’re still
wondering what kind of person would buy something like this, Frank Fernando is
more than glad to describe their typical client: “very wealthy,
high-net-worth individuals for whom it is very difficult to buy gifts because
they have everything.”
Goldgenie
started out in London, in 1989, and made a name for itself by gold-plating
anything their clients desired. Even today, Fernando admits that they will
sometimes take their special gold-plating machine to wealthy people’s homes to
cover their bathrooms in the precious metal.
After developing a
massive Arab client base, they decided to make their outrageously expensive
goods available to the entire Gulf region, and opened their first retail shop
in Sharjah. It’s been doing so well that they now plan on opening a new one in
neighboring Qatar and another in South Arabia.
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